Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Day three, second flight, new personal records

Yesterday turned out to be a really good day for flying. We had ceilings of 3600 m and I had a 6 m/s thermal. Both more than I have ever experienced before. Some even reported 8-9 m/s thermals. No lack of instability...I flew with Jan Haagdorens and we decided to go south, heading for Dignes. Take off from Chabre, first climb to 2400 m, waiting for Jan to take off. A second thermal took me to 2700 m, which was enough to cross the valley to La Platte. There I climbed to 3400 m and headed for Roc d'Aigle. Couldn't find anything decent there and searched for half an hour together with Jan. Finally we headed back to the La Platte area and found a solid 5 m/s thermal which rocketed us up to nearly 3600 m. Definitely high enough to head for La Lure. At La Lure, Jan pointed me out that some small cu's were forming to our right hand side and they rewarded us with a 3 m/s climb to 3400 m. So we headed for Les Mees. A 20 km glide. The longest I've ever done and I arrived at 1900 m. High enough to start searching above the plateau. Things were completely different over there. Only 1 m/s thermal and a 2000 m ceiling. After searching for a while in the direction of Dignes, I headed back to the Durance valley and landed near Chateau Arnoux. A 3 hour flight was finished, 61 km were flown (3 turnpoints). New PB for total distance, furthest glide, strongest thermal and highest ceiling. What a day!